Friday, February 22, 2013

That Snickering Skinface: Doom Asylum (1987)

I once asked myself if I am that one guy who can enjoy almost anything life can throw at me and, for all honestly, I am not. So will be that surprising that I have mixed feelings for this supposed slasher comedy? I guess not.

Doom Asylum featured, much to insult to my intelligence, the dumbest cards to play every slasher stereotype there is, killer included; we focus on a group of five teens venturing to an accident site (which so happens to be the same spot where our killer lost his wife in a driving accident) to pay respect for the those who passed away and stuff. Whatever it was, it's gone off the window by the time these kids decided to go sunbathing and go picnicking instead and where else than inside an abandoned asylum?

Same asylum where Mitch had murdered the morticians. What happened to it and its staff? Don't know, don't care. It's just very barren, let's leave it at that.

Or maybe not too barren; other than our killer, also in the asylum was an all-girl punk band secretly rehearsing their wailing-I mean, singing, which our group of bright-colored idiots stumbled upon. The token black guy's then smitten by the band's token black girl and soon this guy just had to go in and meet up with her, only to be killed with a pair of clamps.

Right after that, ole' skinned Mitch begins to systematically kill off those who enters his asylum from both parties, doing it all in good blood which I'm happy for but still left me a little confused as to why he waited for the other five to come around if he could have started his killing spree with the three band girls? I mean can't he not hear that "singing"?

Okay, maybe I'm being unfair here as the movie was intentionally made as a slasher-comedy so these guys are supposed to be dumb enough to give us some chuckles. Sadly, as far as half-bake horror comedy goes, Doom Asylum only half-worked; the silly characters are hardly likable either cuz they're annoying to begin with or they overcooked the cliches of the characters they supposed to be spoofing. They're basically just cartoon characters played by live actors with really bad scripting and wooden acting, with the worst being our killer who in every murder just had to spat out something supposedly witty, but fails when you realize one-liners are supposed to be one sentences, not an entire paragraph. (He just had to explain to us his political views...)

There isn't much of a story to tell here either, just some cliched jokes and by-the-book bodycount film theatrics. Thankfully, it's the blood and gore that made Doom Asylum worth a single night's renting, as every character here meet their demise as gory as possible, making some of the waiting and enduring worthwhile. (Including a death by bonesaw of pre-Sex and the City Kristin Davis, which is a pure winner for me since she played the most annoying skeptic I've seen here. That and I just really hate that series...)

Running on a short 77 minutes and filled in with lengthy black and white footages from the movie The Demon barber of Fleet Street (1936) (any longer than that and I might have thrown the TV off a window), Doom Asylum had its ups and downs, but if one's willing to relax and wants to feel smarter than everybody else then look no further! This movie will definitely make you feel just like Einstein, all the while enjoying some dork getting a powerdrill to his head just because he kept chasing a baseball card. If it's not funny, then it could owe you at least that!

Bodycount:
1 female killed in car crash
1 male stabbed on the chest with scalpel
1 male stabbed to death with scalpel
1 male had his head crushed with clamps
1 female dunked head-first into an acid-filled sink
1 male powerdrilled on the head
1 female strangled with stethoscope
1 female gets a bonesaw to the face
1 male gets a hypodermic needle to the neck, toes cut off
1 female crushed to a cube through meat processor
1 male repeatedly stabbed on the eye with a mirror's handle
total: 11

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About Me

I'm a Filipino Nerd with a penchant for all things weird, messy and overly theatrical. Loves to draw, write, and read at a highschool level.
Has a thing for slashers, monsters, comic books, Doctor Who and collecting knick-knacks such as a certain line of toys based on a 2010 reboot of an 80s cartoon about talking, rainbow colored ponies.